30 - Post 3

Who were you before the world told you who to be?

I love this quote because the first time I read it, it hit me like a wall of bricks. I never coordinated my thoughts into this sequence to ask myself this question before. This is an amazing question that I wish everyone would sit down and think about, which is why I chose it as a topic for this month.

Our culture emphasizes the idea of “childhood fun” where you get to be as creative and weird as you want because you’re a kid and you’ll “grow out of it”. We’re conditioned to feel bad about things that don’t fit into the narrow path to the American dream. We’re taught that fun is for the weekends, holidays and vacation and that it looks a certain way. That it usually always involves alcohol. You are seen as immature if you don’t wear the clothes, have the hobbies, job and demeanor of what’s socially acceptable of an adult. Depending on the environment each of us grew up in, this idea can differ in severity.

When I was a little kid, I was a weirdo and a half 🤣 I remember singing to the moon, yelling at my toys like they could understand, made an imaginary friends club, and often escaping reality into my own little world. I preferred to only wear long dresses and to be barefoot. I don’t have a lot of happy memories of my childhood, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most is when I would play outside in the summertime in my midget wedding dress (yes, I literally got a midget wedding dress as a hand me down). I would fly around my yard, barefoot in the grass and then disappear into the woods. The dress would get caught on branches and rip, && that didn’t bother me. I loved that dress and how it made me feel. The dress that is in my arm tattoo is made in that dress’ image.

I can remember the exact moments that I let myself change because of the world. I thankfully naturally grew out of singing to the moon and imaginary friends but I still yell at inanimate objects haha! It was really the way I felt about myself and how I wanted to present myself to the world that was affected the most. There was one year for spirit week during middle school where you had to wear the color red. I chose to wear my large and in charge but beautiful 50’s poodle skirt halloween outfit. There was a girl who picked on me and said I only chose to wear that because I just like to dress up and wear dresses. She meant it as an insult and I took it as one. I never again dressed up for school, like literally never again. I wore clothes going forward that wouldn’t let me stick out like a pretty dress would. I began to feel guilty for wanting to wear a dress and look pretty. One of the only things I allowed myself to feel happiness about.

There was another time in middle school where I was wearing shorts and I ran down the hallway and there was a (very mean) girl who yelled down the hallway “Amanda is fattt Amanda is fattt”. If you know me, you know I have a body dysphoria issue. THAT was the last time I wore shorts, even to this day I hate shorts. That one definitely scarred me for a while. I just don’t like how my body and legs feel in shorts, so I don’t wear them anymore.

Before I let the world judge and change who I was, I was an artist, I was a dress lover, an animal lover and a writer, I was a confident chick. I told jokes constantly and always tried to solve everyone around me problems. While I maintained many of these traits internally I didn’t project them out into the world or embody them physically, I lost this pure version of myself slowly piece by piece between 5th grade until I was 27 years old. The past two years I’ve been learning about how to practice self love and how to listen to yourself. It sounds SO WEIRD to say ‘listen to yourself’ but until you realize your body does have a way to tell you, you won’t hear it. Its taken books, self help blogs, inspirational instagram accounts and a lot of internal exploring to get to the point where I know that other people’s opinion of me isn’t my problem. For so long I thought that quote “what other people think of you isn’t your problem/business” was an oxymoron because the only thing we truly have as a species, is each other. So, of course it matters what people think of you, you want them all to like you! The more friends and connections the better! Sure, having a lot of friends sounds great and I bet it feels great for a little bit too, all of that attention. If there is one thing true about humans in this world, it is that depending on another person as your source of happiness will 100% always result in a failure. The cliche saying ‘You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else” holds merit. There are many “cliche” sayings that tell you exactly what you need to know, that I question when we all decided to come up with the idea of “cliche” so people won’t take them seriously. I’ve seen that so many times - there are things right in front of you that will change your life, the only thing wrong is your perception of it.

I’ve learned that you have to stop convincing yourself that happiness is attached to tangible things or to other people. I remember the kid I was living in a very rough world but always fighting to have happiness. She let the things that made her happy, make her happy! No one else had opinions about those things yet and no one told her she should be doing anything specific yet either. I love pink, glitter, sparkles and big goofy dresses damn it, they make me happy! I love learning about people’s problems and using my experiences to help them figure out the best way to solve their current issue. It makes me happy to draw and paint on paper, in notebooks and on walls. Dresses in general and fashion overall makes me happy and is fascinating to me. There are so many ways to do self expression with fashion. I deeply hope and wish that we get to a point in society where people can fashionably present themselves in the way they want to and that it’s accepted by everyone without prejudice.

I’ve always been a creative person and I need to be creating to be happy. I’m working on allowing my adult, corporate America having job self enjoy and do it freely. I swear I did not buy the big red dress in these photos because of the red dress story haha! But I realized while editing this and thinking about it, I have only recently started wearing red, I always thought it was too flashy of a color for me to wear! It’s actual proof that committing to self love works and its not just a corney thing happy people preach lol! There are a bunch of photos of me growing up and then the professional photos were taken by my friend Jess! You can check her out here. The photoshoot(s) I'm doing with her are my 30th Birthmas present to myself, and something I know the little kid version of me would love!!